Summary: In healthy adults, normal day-to-day mood swings do not appear to alter confidence in decisions.
Source: BIAL Foundation
This study is the first to test whether everyday fluctuations in mood and related variables—such as stress, sleep quality, or enjoyment of food—are linked to changes in metacognitive states like confidence and response vigor. The findings indicate that, in a healthy adult sample, mood fluctuations do not systematically affect confidence in decision-making.
In Descartes’ Error, António Damásio emphasized the deep connections between emotion and rational behavior, highlighting that affect and cognition are closely intertwined. While neuroscience and psychology have long studied how emotions influence thinking, fewer studies have examined how short-term mood fluctuations influence metacognitive evaluations—specifically the confidence we have in our decisions.
To address that gap, researchers María da Fonseca, Giovanni Maffei, Rubén Moreno-Bote and Alexandre Hyafil—from institutions including the University of Pompeu Fabra, Koa Health B.V., Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, and the University of Buenos Aires—designed a longitudinal, naturalistic investigation. They ran two online experiments to track daily mood reports and decision-making behavior over time, testing whether implicit markers of confidence co-vary with mood in healthy adults.
Published in October 2022 in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience under the title “Mood and implicit confidence independently fluctuate at different time scales,” the study followed 50 participants—mostly students from the University of Pompeu Fabra—across 10 consecutive days in real-life settings. Participants completed mood self-reports and visual-discrimination decision tasks each day, allowing the team to measure both subjective mood and objective, implicit indicators of confidence.
Implicit confidence was measured primarily by the proportion of opt-out choices on trials where participants could decline to respond; median reaction time on correct, non-opt-out trials served as a secondary proxy for confidence. These behavioral measures provided session-by-session indices of how confident participants implicitly felt about their decisions, without relying solely on explicit self-reports.
The study reported a consistent association among mood, stress, sleep quality, and food enjoyment within the same session—participants’ reports of these affect-related variables tended to move together. The behavioral markers also performed as intended: opt-out proportions and reaction times offered reliable session-level measures of implicit confidence.
Crucially, the researchers found no consistent coupling between day-to-day mood variations (and related states) and the implicit markers of confidence. In other words, although mood and stress or sleep quality tended to fluctuate together, those fluctuations did not reliably predict changes in confidence as measured by opt-out behavior or reaction times.
Instead, the two domains—mood-related states and implicit confidence—fluctuated on different time scales. Mood, sleep quality, stress level, and food enjoyment showed faster dynamics, shifting over periods of roughly a day or even half a day. Implicit confidence, by contrast, fluctuated more slowly, with a characteristic time scale closer to two-and-a-half days. This temporal dissociation suggests that spontaneous mood swings and the internal sense of confidence in decisions are largely independent processes in healthy adults.
Rubén Moreno-Bote described the finding as surprising, noting that the original hypothesis predicted a coupling between spontaneous mood changes and confidence. The observed independence and distinct temporal rhythms, however, have important implications. Understanding these separate time scales may help clarify the mechanisms underlying affective disorders, where mood and metacognition can both be disrupted but not necessarily in tandem.
About this mood and decision-making research news
Author: Press Office
Source: BIAL Foundation
Contact: Press Office – BIAL Foundation
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Original Research: Closed access. “Mood and implicit confidence independently fluctuate at different time scales” by María da Fonseca et al., published in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.
Abstract
Mood and implicit confidence independently fluctuate at different time scales
Mood is a key component of decision-making. People experience alternating periods of higher and lower mood, and while these fluctuations are well described, their relationship to metacognition—especially confidence in decisions—remains understudied.
To explore this, the researchers conducted two online longitudinal experiments combining daily mood self-reports with visual-discrimination decision-making tasks. Implicit confidence was indexed by the rate of opt-out selections when that option was available, with median reaction time on correct trials serving as a secondary behavioral proxy.
Within each session, mood, stress, food enjoyment, and sleep quality were strongly coupled in participants’ reports. The behavioral measures of confidence (opt-out proportion and reaction time) proved to be reliable session-level indicators.
Importantly, mood-related measures and implicit confidence markers were not consistently coupled across sessions. Instead, they fluctuated with distinct temporal profiles: mood-related variables showed faster fluctuations (around a day or half a day), while implicit confidence varied more slowly (about two-and-a-half days).
These results suggest that, in a healthy adult population, spontaneous fluctuations in mood and confidence in decision-making are largely independent phenomena. The temporal separation between affective states and metacognitive signals may be relevant for understanding and treating affective disorders, where these systems can become dysregulated.